Not exactly a drive-through, but do other countries have drive-in movie theaters?

You mean - only for the rich people, who own cars?

But movies are pastime of workers, common people, not just for the rich who have personal cars!

OK, now we do have many cars ... but most movie houses have been closed, so still a no-go here!

In the US, many people own cars, not just the wealthy.

Yeah, if you're poor, for the most part you have a crummy car. For the same reasons enumerated upthread, a lot of cities are laid out so you can't really get around on foot (either because of traffic safety issues or just sheer distances) and a lot have awful public transportation. Poor people tend to shell out (relatively) modest sums of money for a junky used car. These cars do end up requiring a lot of repairs, but sadly, such is life when you don't have the initial payment and/or the credit rating to buy new. And friends who can fix cars are highly valued.

The Warner Drive-In (http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/5531) in Huntington Beach, California was the only way we could afford movies at $1.50 per carload. We popped our own corn, brought a gallon of iced tea and cups. For kids wearing pajamas was required.

Seeing The Ten Commandments on the huge screen made an impact on my tween brain.

Not exactly a drive-through, but do other countries have drive-in movie theaters?

You mean - only for the rich people, who own cars?

But movies are pastime of workers, common people, not just for the rich who have personal cars!

OK, now we do have many cars ... but most movie houses have been closed, so still a no-go here!

In the US, many people own cars, not just the wealthy. And drive in movies are actually more affordable than regular movies for families with children. Regular movie theaters charge by the person, and you cannot bring your own food/drink in, but must purchase it at high prices at the snack bar. A drive in charges by the carload, and you can bring your own food/drink. Plus a drive in generally features two movies for one admission, so you can load up the car with kids, park in the parking lot, and pass out the munchies and juice boxes. As the kids fall asleep, just bed them down in the back seat or on an air mattress in the back of the truck.

Drive ins are rare here , I don't think they exist anymore.

And I sometimes bring my own food to the movies I've purchased elsewhere. As do others I've seen .

The other posters are right. Except in really large cities like New York and Boston public transportation is between bad and terrible. All but the poorest of the poor own a car. Its the only way to get to work.

Many families have more than one car. Most people get their driver's licence at age 16. A normal suburban middle-class nuclear family - mom, dad, a 16-year old and an 18-year-old - will have 4, or at least 3, cars. Typically the kids drive the oldest cars in the household.

My state, Nebraska, has a lot of rural farm land. State law allows for this and will issue kids as young as 14 a school-only driver's licence. That licence only allows them to drive on rural roads from home to their school. That 14-year-old kid will have a car. The parents own the car. They maintain it and pay taxes and insurance on it, but the 14-year-old is the primary driver.

The other posters are right. Except in really large cities like New York and Boston public transportation is between bad and terrible. All but the poorest of the poor own a car. Its the only way to get to work.

Many families have more than one car. Most people get their driver's licence at age 16. A normal suburban middle-class nuclear family - mom, dad, a 16-year old and an 18-year-old - will have 4, or at least 3, cars. Typically the kids drive the oldest cars in the household.

My state, Nebraska, has a lot of rural farm land. State law allows for this and will issue kids as young as 14 a school-only driver's licence. That licence only allows them to drive on rural roads from home to their school. That 14-year-old kid will have a car. The parents own the car. They maintain it and pay taxes and insurance on it, but the 14-year-old is the primary driver.

3 cars is a bit much in my area. 2 is the norm, with 3 being an exception. Usually the kids use Mom or Dad's car with permission.

In my neighborhood there is NO public transportation. If Mom and Dad both work they both drive. If the high-school age kids have after-school jobs or want to do after-school sports the family has to have a 3rd and possibly a 4th car.

Even the places that have public transportation here, don't have public transportation. My city (not big enough for a subway but on the larger side as far as medium-sized cities go) theoretically has a bus system:

As you can see, there are large sections of the city where the busses don't go at all. Even if your home, work, grocery store, doctor, etc. are all within walking distance of a bus line, you're looking at up to 30 minutes of waiting at a bus stop (and that's if the busses are all running equally spaced and on time), plus walking time to get there, plus the extra time it takes to ride the route (and transfer to a different line, potentially) over what it would take if you owned a car, including all the extra stops and distance it goes. Sure, fare is a dollar, but you're giving up two hours of your day just to get to the store (and that doesn't include the time you're actually shopping).

When I was a librarian, my branch was in a little town about 20 minutes away from the city. Median income was right at the poverty line (~$15,000/year). There were a significant number of adults in that town who *couldn't* work - they couldn't afford a car, there was no transportation to anywhere they could get jobs, and the one tiny grocery store in town only needed two part-time employees. It was really a waste of manpower, because all those people were forced to waste their days watching TV and collecting meager government checks when they could easily have been earning something more substantial and really contributing to something

The UK has similar car owning habits but to a lesser degree and it's concentrated in certain areas. People in small rural areas can't get by without one, because it might be a 15 mile drive to the shops and the town you work in and the public transport in your area is so rubbish that there are only 2 buses a week into the nearest town. Families who live in areas like this might have two cars if both parents drive. If you live in the affluent suburbs and are of that persuasion yourself, you'd likely have more than one car. People in cities, especially younger people, are often less likely to own them. It is illegal not to have car insurance here (not sure if that's the case in America) and the cost is infinitely greater in cities because of the higher risk of having it stolen. Add into that the fact that the younger you are the more expensive insurance is. So oftentimes it's just too expensive to insure your car in big cities to make owning one worth it.

I have had both experiences; I lived in a rural area where I couldn't have survived without my car, but when I moved to London I didn't own one for several years. I have one now; I can afford to run and insure it because I'm at an age where insurance has become cheaper (it still costs me £40-something a month for basic third party fire and theft because I live in a high risk area), but I wouldn't use it for driving to work - public transport takes care of that. I use it for social activities, though.

I've never seen a drive in movie happening here. I would love to give that a try, it sounds like a great experience. The closest we get to that, I think, is open air screenings of classic films in the parks during arts festivals and the like.

Yes, insurance is required here too. The exact regulations vary by state, though - some are a lot stricter than others about what counts as "insured." And of course there's nothing stopping someone from driving even when they don't have a license and insurance - the fines are higher if they're caught, but that doesn't help if they cause an accident We have "uninsured motorist" coverage as part of our insurance, which basically says if someone else causes damage to us or our car and isn't insured enough to pay for it, our insurance company will pay the extra (after deductible, which we'd still have to pay off the top anyway). I don't think all insurance options have that, though - in my state you can get by with insurance which basically only covers the other guy.

I spent yesterday looking for a car for my 16 yr old son. Our DD has hers at college with her. And even though DH and I primarily work from home, we've become frustrated sharing our two cars with our son the last couple of months. We could manage and coordinate or delay activities more but we've decided we want the convenience of him having his own car. On insurance, our cost jumped as soon as DS got his license and had to have insurance. Adding a 4th car to our policy will raise it more but not as much as just adding a 16 yr old male to our policy.

Slartibartfast's posts are a very good description of my city, too. We have a not-too-terrible bus system in the city, almost none in the residential areas. The bus stop nearest my home is about 3 miles (4.8 km) away. And my area gets foul weather - blizzards in the winter, tornadoes in the spring, life-threatening heat in the summer. The last thing you need is to walk to school or work then, hours later, be stranded by foul weather.

In my state liability insurance, which pays for the damage to the car or building you hit, is mandatory. Collision insurance, which pays for damage to your car, is optional by law but may be required by your lender. I typically keep collision insurance on my car until its about 10 years old. At that point the premiums are more than the potential payout.

In my hometown, my family lived in the suburbs and city buses only stopped at one "central" spot for pick-up and drop-off to downtown. The central pick-up spot was not a walkable distance and downtown was 25 miles or so. So if you wanted to go somewhere other than downtown, you had to drive My family was not wealthy by any means but we had four cars as my sister and I both had after-school activities and my parents both worked. To say my car was a beater would've been an understatement though... it occasionally caught on fire

To add my 2-cents to previous conversation, no permission is required from mine or anyone elses bank or credit union to perform the transfer. I give my bank the account details of where I want to send money, and off it goes.

Having someone's account number to transfer money to them doesn't give me any kind of access to their account. Hell, unless I pay an overt amount of attention to BSB (sorting) numbers I don't even know which bank they bank with! And if I did, and they used online banking, I still woudn't know their login information to access the account.

I think here its just not considered to be particularly personal information.

The thing is, here in the US, if you have someone's routing number and account number, you could just as easily take money out as put it into their account. I think, on a similar thread about banking a while ago, someone said that in their country, there is one account number for transferring money to an account and a second, separate, number for transferring money out of the account. Until we get something like that, individuals transferring money between their bank accounts is not going to happen on a regular basis.